Customer Development Process

The entire process from attracting to retaining and eventually converting customers into advocates for your brand is the called the Customer Development Process.
“Ultimately, Marketing is the art of attracting and keeping profitable customers.”
Why are customers important?
Every business runs on its customers. A loyal customer base keeps the business growing. All companies are changing their strategies and making them customer oriented. Even the traditional Organization Chart is now reversed to bring customers to the top in order. The customer today is more educated and informed than ever before and thus should be kept at the centre for development of all marketing strategies.
Why is it important to retain customers?
• Building new customers can cost upto 5 times more than satisfying and retaining current customers
• The loyal customer contributes to the growth of the company by spreading Word of mouth, in most cases the most effective method of marketing.
The Process
1. Identify “Potential Customers/ Suspects”
• This is the first step in the customer development process
• Must have- a large intensive database
• Have detailed information about each individual suspect
2. Identify “Prospective Customers”
• “People with the motivation, ability and opportunity to make a good purchase
o This can be figured out by interviews, personal interactions, and checking their financial standings
• The Customer buying decision process has to be kept in mind while evaluating prospective customers. Customers who have recognized problems and are searching for information are precisely your prospective customers. It is necessary to tap them.
Eliminate All Non- prospective customers
3. Convert Prospective Customers into “First-Time Customers”

• An essential step.
• A customer in the third stage of the buying decision process, i.e., “Evaluation of alternatives”, is a company’s target at this stage.
• To bring about this advancement in the process it is necessary to maximize the quantity and quality of the brand “touch points”.

4. Convert first time customers into” Repeat Customers”
• Effective marketing communication is required to convert a first-time user into a repeat customer, to ensure that he made a good choice by choosing the product and the brand.
• This is where the company starts investing in customer retention.
• This stage connects to the last level of the buying decision process, i.e., post purchase behavior.
• After a product has been purchased, whether a good or a service it is essential to keep track of the customers experience and gain feedback. If the product falls short of its perceived value the, customer is disappointed and is lost.
• Marketer must monitor post purchase satisfaction, post purchase actions, and post purchase product uses and services.
5. From Repeat customers to “Clients”
• As mentioned above, lesser investment goes into retaining customers than attracting new customers, a requisite amount should go into retention of customers.
• Since the above category is tending towards loyalty, they would now need some sort of preferential treatment from the company for having been their customers for quite some time.
• It is when the company decides that a customer deserves preferential treatment and can rise in the stages of customer loyalty, is when a customer becomes a “client”.
6. Transformation from Clients to “Members”
• To gain complete assurance regarding the customer’s association with the brand and belief in the significant lack of threat from competitors, Clients must be transformed into members.
• It is important for the company to tie up customers with memberships to the brand for long term, thus granting the company customer retention and the customer discounts, extra services, preferential treatment etc.
7. From Members to “Advocates”
• This is precisely where the customer begins to play a double ended role, one as providing a revenue stream to the company, as well as recommending the company and its products and services to others.
• The customer here dissolves into the marketing strategy of the company and by the “word of mouth” spreads the goodwill of the brand and its offerings.
• At this level, the customer is of highest value.
8. From Advocates to “Partners”
• The Advocates can lastly turn into partners by taking active interest in the business and carrying it forward.
• This is the time when they would have deep knowledge regarding the running of the company as well as the larger sector that the company is a part of.

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